Antoine Fuqua has revealed his next film will be a biopic of controversial rapper Tupac Shakur, who was infamously killed during a Las Vegas drive-by shooting in 1996.
The director was recently linked to a reunion with “Tears Of The Sun” star Bruce Willis on prison-escape drama “The Tomb” — that, however, is now being described by Fuqua simply as “a conversation I’ve been having with Bruce.” Fuqua was also recently attached to direct “Consent To Kill” that back in January that had Colin Farrell, Gerard Butler & Matthew Fox battling for the lead role of Mitch Rapp, a counterterrorism agent who goes up against “a vengeful Saudi billionaire, an ex-East German Stasi spy and a husband-and-wife team of assassins — all while dealing with a knee injury.” That film was set up at CBS Films and had a proposed summer shoot date but with nothing being announced about the film since, we would guess development is stalled for now. With those projects still finding their footing, the biopic on the rapper better known as 2Pac or Makavelli is set to take precedence.
“It looks like we’re doing Tupac Shakur’s movie next in September, that’s what I’ve been starting up and working on now,” Fuqua told Digital Spy. “I’ve been working on that for a while with Morgan Creek and Jim Robinson. I just got the greenlight from him and we’re going in September. I’ve just started to prep that.”
The rapper was last portrayed on-screen by “The Hurt Locker” star Anthony Mackie in George Tillman Jr.’s “Notorious” though Mackie probably shouldn’t expect a call up from Fuqua any time soon with the director looking to “discover someone new. I want to discover a lot of new people if I can. Obviously I’m going to have to put some people in it that you know, just because actors have different skills. I want to go to the streets and find him anywhere he might be in the world.” Whether Fuqua has an actor with rapping talent in mind, a la the casting of Jamal Woolard in the aforementioned Notorious B.I.G. biopic, remains to be seen.
Shakur released five albums in his short-lived career, three of which reached number one in the charts. His 1996 album All Eyez On Me remains one of the best selling hip hop records of all time. The upcoming portrayal of the rapper, his controversial death and the infamous East and West Coast hip-hop rivalry is sure to raise eyebrows — interestingly, Fuqua’s last film “Brooklyn’s Finest” shares its title with a Jay-Z and Notorious B.I.G. song which referenced Shakur during the rivalry’s peak.